Considers that copyright/patents are a balance between the public good and private gain and seeks to maximise the former to encourage education, knowledge and creativity. Is sceptical of industry claims of higher and higher levels of intellectual property rights and wants to ensure that all decisions and legislation passed are based on strong *empirical* evidence rather than suspicious content industry claims. Is keen to see increasing use of open source and free software in government and parliament and is firmly against software patents and the needless extension of copyright terms. Believes that democracy *requires* free access to knowledge and information and that allowing firms to lock-down culture will be extremely bad for our democratic culture. 